4 ms·
For one thing, more funding would help. >In 2017, mosquito-borne West Nile virus, which currently infects about 2,000 people annually in the U.S. received $42
by eigenloss 7y ago
For one thing, more funding would help.
>In 2017, mosquito-borne West Nile virus, which currently infects about 2,000 people annually in the U.S. received $42 million in support from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Lyme disease, with 20 times the number of reported cases, got half as much, a figure that has changed little in a decade.
Doubling allocations for Lyme research and prevention to $50 million doesn't seem like an unreasonable or overcomplicated request. Congress allocated over a billion dollars for Zika [1] - a disease that something like 10 Americans ever had. How does it make sense that a disease actively affecting 400,000 Americans each year is allocated effectively $0 by the same Congress?
[1] https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/28/senate-approves-zika-funding/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/28/senate-approves-zika-fun...
- ajhurliman 7y agoWould more funding for attempting to link vaccinations to autism help?
- eigenloss 7y agoNo, and that's completely orthogonal to what I suggested! Congrats on breaking the HN guidelines... again.
- ajhurliman 7y agoNo, the two are analogous. The point is that more funding doesn't result in proving a point. You can spend all the money you want on this condition which doesn't exist, but more money won't suddenly turn this hallucination into reality. Also: Disagreeing with you does not constitute breaking guidelines.
- eigenloss 7y agoYou think Lyme borreliosis in its entirety is a hallucination? I guess you wouldn't mind if I dumped a bunch of Lyme-carrying ticks in your home, then.